It is staggering to find that Vasari, in the face of merited ridicule, had no doubt that he was a great painter. How he boasts of his own powers! “But what matters most for this art, is that they have made it so perfect today, and so easy for him who possesses design, that where formerly a picture was made by one of our masters in six years, today our masters make six in one. And I am the credible witness of this both by my observation and by my work. And many more perfect and finished pictures are now seen, than formerly were made by the important masters.” (Vol. IV, p. 13.) Nothing is more appalling than to find Vasari at Florence and Lomazzo at Milan regularly naming Giulio Romano, Polidoro and Maturino along with Raphael and Michelangelo. Evidently the old sure taste of the Renaissance has yielded to confusion. [Illustration: FIG. 310. Giulio Romano. Battle for Troy. Fresco.—_Palazzo del Tè. Mantua._ ] Indeed patronage had changed. It is no longer spontaneous but organized. We now have academies, art schools, art criticism, exhibitions, archæologists, picture dealers. Art no longer rests on generally accepted ideas and broad approbations, but is a game between experts. To enumerate the followers of Michelangelo and Raphael and allot to each his due dispraise would be in no way profitable. Giulio Romano may represent them all. With extraordinary powers as a draughtsman of the figure, and with paradoxical taste in minor decoration, we know him already as the vulgarizer of Raphael’s designs in the Stanza of Heliodorus and of the Burning City. Later (1524–46) removed from Raphael’s influence, at Mantua, he develops a coarse titanism. The old Castello of the Gonzagas and the Palazzo del Tè, Figure 310, are tediously full of sensational and occasionally obscene mythologies which are done with amazing energy and facility, but are as restless and undecorative in design as they are hot and foxy in color. And the immoderations and indecencies have not even the excuse of naturalness, they are coldly calculated and studied. Such talented Florentine imitators of Michelangelo as Pontormo and Bronzino we have already considered. At Rome, he left at least one disciple of talent, Daniele da Volterra, in the composition of whose masterpiece the Deposition in the Convent of the Trinità, at Rome, the master himself may have had a hand. Rather than delay over these complacent epigones we do well to pass to those few more intelligent artists who saw that something was amiss. Michelangelo Amerighi, (1569–1608), called from his Lombard birthplace Caravaggio, and Annibale Carracci of Bologna are here the outstanding names. The former bitterly fought the grand style in the name of naturalism, the latter attempted to reintegrate it through a critical eclectism. Their influence is dominant from the last decade of the sixteenth century.